


The Meaning of Beauty

by ghostbutt



Category: Naruto
Genre: Akatsuki - Freeform, Gen, One Shot, deidara only plays a minor role but i thought i'd tag
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-25
Updated: 2019-01-25
Packaged: 2019-10-16 01:38:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,081
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17540231
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ghostbutt/pseuds/ghostbutt
Summary: A Sasori-centered one-shot. More of a character study than a story, really, since there's not a lot of plot. Note that I haven't watched/read all of Naruto, so I don't know whether this is canon-compliant, since it is set at the first meeting of Sasori and Deidara.Sasori ran a hand across the polished wood of his arm, imagined the cold wood and the smooth, almost soft texture he remembered from when he’d made it. He thought of the knots and ridges in the block of timber and he could almost sense the sandpaper chafing at his fingers, smoothing his work down to silky perfection. But there was no chafing anymore, his hands would never be cracked and bloody and overworked again, because he was perfect now. No, not perfect yet, but better than he used to be.





	The Meaning of Beauty

Somewhere beyond the veil of death, there had to be something that filthy mortality couldn’t get its claws on. Something great, something flawless, something that evaded mortal comprehension with its perfect, perfect permanence. And he would be its maker, he knew that in his heart. He would create something ideal, no, he would be something ideal and then and only then would he feel fine. Otherwise… 

How could you feel right when you clearly weren’t?

Sasori ran a hand across the polished wood of his arm, imagined the cold wood and the smooth, almost soft texture he remembered from when he’d made it. He thought of the knots and ridges in the block of timber and he could almost sense the sandpaper chafing at his fingers, smoothing his work down to silky perfection. But there was no chafing anymore, his hands would never be cracked and bloody and overworked again, because he was perfect now. No, not perfect yet, but better than he used to be. 

He inspected his fingers. They were pale and pretty and perfectly uniform. He’d worked on the pinky alone for a week. And he’d cut himself thrice with the carving knife. He’d bled on the carpet. The red had been deep and harsh against the soft white and he had never been able to get rid of the stain. It was probably as close as a human could get to eternity. An ugly stain in a creamy white carpet that was going to be discarded as soon as it was discovered, because one couldn’t bear these hideous blemishes in ones house when there was a nice, clean alternative. 

He was waiting, right now, for his new partner. He hated waiting, but there wasn’t much else to do when you were all alone in a cave full of dead things. It disgusted him. He was above it all. He would never be like this, vile and rotting and falling apart at the seams. He was immortal and in that divine. 

~~Though, if you couldn’t die, how could you determine that you were alive?~~

They had told him to meet them here and Sasori had objected, obviously. He’d known that Hidan never cleaned up after himself. He was filthy and frankly, undeserving of the gift he’d been given. Scarring and bleeding and breaking apart, he refused any sort of stability. Disgusting. Sasori would never understand how one could find joy in destruction. Destruction was for things undeserving of an existence. If a thing was meant to be, if it was beautiful and skillfully made and right, it should be eternal. 

And in turn, only eternal things were right. 

He’d left Hiruko behind for the first meeting. There were some scratches in the plating that had to be mended before he was ready to use again and so Sasori was sitting free, by himself, on a lone rock in a cold, dark cave, illuminated by nothing but stray beams of sunlight that seemed like they got lost in a place they didn’t belong. Where the floor was illuminated, fresh pools of blood reflected its golden glow like the ocean at dusk. He couldn’t see the bodies but he knew they were there, watching him with their empty, empty eyes, so full of potential. Sasori was glad he couldn’t smell anything. 

He imagined the cave, only hours ago, full of bustling life like a hive of insects, crawling around on the wet floor, their warm breath dampening up the cave. Who had they been? It didn’t make a difference to remember them, now that they were gone. Hidan had done them a favour, Sasori thought, but there was no approval in his heart, nor thinly-veiled discontent. It was nothing but the cold, hard truth; that they were gone and just as irrelevant to this story as the man who had killed them to clear his path. Sasori knew he didn’t care either. To Hidan, humans were nothing but sacrifices that didn’t know they were, yet. To Sasori, they might be even less. 

He regretted coming early. He swore to make his new partner regret being late. The seconds melted away with the tact of water dripping from the ceiling into the red ocean on the bottom and the only noise in the hollow was the echo of the drops falling and falling and falling and somehow, they never ceased. Nature had a different relationship with eternity. It was easier for the water to be eternal, because in the ocean, in the rivers, in the clouds, it never stopped being water. Not humans, though. They stopped being humans as soon as they were put into the dirt and became dirt themselves. Which made them more alike to dirt than to what Sasori knew he could become and would become as soon as he finally replaced the last piece of dirt in the making. It had proved difficult, but he knew he could do it and then he would be perfect. Then he would be at peace. 

~~he could never be at peace. there was no peace for people like him. this world had no room for peace and there was no love safe for the love you built yourself and the love you felt in the face of true beauty. eternity is true beauty. eternity will never leave you. eternity is the only truly reliable and truly beautiful force in this ugly wretched disgusting universe and so you must become eternal or you’ll fade and disappear and fall apart just like them.~~

He hated waiting. It made the head go places it shouldn’t be able to, just because of the small, insignificant shred of human, the fleshy muscle that replaced the final gear, the final cog to his perfect machinery. 

There was a retching and coughing disrupting the synchronized serenity of the cave. Sasori braced himself for battle, but instead of an enemy, the shape of a boy peeled itself out of the darkness, young, with long, blonde hair and a well of anger behind his eyes that was evident to anyone who bothered to look. He wordlessly walked up to Sasori and Sasori didn’t care to reply because there was nothing to say. He wondered how much the boy knew about him. Whether he would be at all surprised. It didn’t seem that way.  
The boy shook his hand. And then he spoke and his voice ripped through the air like torn fabric. 

“The wood on your arm is splintered.”


End file.
